Day 124.

Work is a funny thing. Much of the advice in Proverbs regards work ethic, supporting hard work and advising against deceitfulness and laziness. Our society is supported by the labor of millions in different sectors who are often both lazy and deceitful, but those who do something in exchange for money, food, or drugs nonetheless. The funny thing is though that there is no specific formula that says if you work this much, you will make this much money or have this type of life style. I know plenty of people that work tirelessly and do not earn enough to support their families just as I know plenty of people who work tirelessly and have more than plenty for their families. Their are also those who don't work and don't have much just like their are those who don't work much and have more than enough. I have worked two jobs a summer for the past three summers and have always had enough, but not always plenty. A kid can only make so much baby sitting and working at a movie theater--my usual places of work. This summer has been a change, albeit a strange mix: an insurance agency and bussing tables. I work mostly because honestly I need the money. My family, excepting my grandmother, does not have a lot of money which makes paying for college a bit of a difficulty. My family as a whole has helped me a lot with school, making my education relatively burden-less so far compared to other's debt and what my own could be. My work this summer has prevented me from having much free time, but it isn't killing me into a constant tiredness that I am unable to shake. It is the first summer in the last three, the summers since I stopped going to the island, that my eye hasn't started twitching from exhaustion or stress of work. I babysat 3-4 young kids, playing with them and cleaning up after them, for about ten hours a day, five days a week, for about three months. I would also pick up night time and weekend shifts at the movie theater for extra cash though I didn't have much energy and am now thinking that my exhaustion while working there last summer could be the reason why I never want to work there again. On top of those two jobs, I stayed up late and woke up early texting. I've often felt bored and painfully lonely this summer because a) I'm not working as much or as difficult of jobs and b) I am not texting someone all the time. Living in this season and comparing it to the same one I experienced last year is so strange. Not only were my jobs so different, but my worries and thoughts have so changed. I feel foolish for wasting so much energy on those worries I used to have and wonder if I will one day feel the same about the worries I have today. I once wrote a facebook note that I am contemplating removing because I no longer feel the angst about work that I did when I wrote it. Our lives, as I wrote about, follow a circular pattern around work. We work hard to get good grades, to get into good schools, to get good jobs, so our children can be supported and get good jobs. We work so we can work so our offspring can work. Maybe their is more to the labor cycle than I am acknowledging or am aware of, but at one point in time, this cycle of sorts felt rather pointless and stupid to me. Overcome with the desire to break free of its greedy fingers, I wrote about trying to bend it into something else though I acknowledged even then the impossibility of doing so. I don't mind it so much anymore, work that is. ( I'm still bugged by my inability to break the cycle.) Work seems pleasurable now, it prevents me from being bored and gives me an outlet to interact with people that I other wise wouldn't have. In fact, sometimes it is easier and more pleasant to work than it is to play. I'm afraid I often do not know what to do with myself when I have free time, time to romp around the world with gaiety and do nothing but what I want. Don't make fun, but one of the books I have been reading, while it is based on religious principles, talks about regaining freedom from the trap that is the cycle of productive work. In essence, a part of the book tries to encourage people to play and be totally unproductive every once in a while just because, not all the time, but every once in a while. I have found it harder to do that then it is to work myself to an eye twitch.